SEMINARS: Thursdays, 11:30-2:30, remotely by Zoom

COURSE DIRECTOR: Joan Steigerwald (steiger@yorku.ca)

OFFICE HOURS: Friday mornings, by appointment, via Zoom

This course explores how visual images affect our understandings and perspectives of the natural world, through the examination of a variety of technologies and practices of visual representations of nature in different cultural and historical contexts.

The course fosters critical reflection upon how visual images of nature affect our understanding of nature. Its philosophical focus is the notion of representation, as a crucial common link between cultural, scientific, artistic and visual practices. It addresses questions on the nature and role of visual representations in culture, in understandings of the environment and in science, asking what counts as objective or accurate representations. The course also analyzes the technological and material conditions of visualization. It examines how various technologies, from practices of cultural image making to scientific instruments, shape our perceptions and conceptions of nature. In science, visual representations are used to depict and communicate understandings of nature. Visualization techniques also assist scientists in making sense of natural phenomena, by making non-visible processes manifest and by offering material forms in which to imagine and conceive natural processes. But imaging practices also operate widely in culture as means for depicting and shaping understandings of natural phenomena. The course explores how phenomena are constructed in the process of representing them, and how the products thus made manifest are artifacts as well as natural entities. It considers how through particular visual images, informed by historically and culturally specific contexts, nature is reconceived.

Texts for the course include theoretical works as well as case studies. They are drawn from a diversity of fields – cultural studies, anthropology, art history, science and technology studies, and environmental studies.

All assigned texts are available on the Moodle website. These texts will form the basis of the Commentaries on Texts, Presentations and class discussions, and hence must be completed prior to each class.

Eight Commentaries on Readings - 24%

Participation - 16%

Presentation - 15%

Research Project:

Project Proposal (November 4) - 10%

Final Project (December 1)  -  35%

Each class will begin with a discussion of the texts assigned for that week. There will be a break in the middle of the class. Presentations will take place after the break.

September 8  –  Introduction

 September 15  –  Visual Representation and Culture

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Practices of Looking: Images, Power and Politics.” Practices of Looking: An introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford UP, 2001, pp. 10-44.

September 22  –  Making Animals Visible

Mitman, Gregg. “Pachyderm Personalities: The Media of Science, Politics and Conservation.” Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism, edited by Gregg Mitman and Lorraine Daston. Columbia UP, 2005, pp. 175–195.

September 29  –  Manufactured Landscapes

Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal. Mongrel Media and National Film Board of Canada, 2006.

Film available to screen online from York Library:

https://ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma993438825505151&context=L&vid=01OCUL_YOR:YOR_DEFAULT&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,edward%20burtynsky%20manufactured%20landscapes&offset=10

October 6  –  Weeds, Gardens and Wild Nature

 Mabey, Richard. “Thoroughwort.” Weeds: How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think about Nature, by Mabey. Profile Books, 2010, pp. 1-21.

Myers, Natasha. “From Edenic Apocalypse to Gardens against Eden: Plants and People in and after the Anthropocene.” Infrastructure, Environment and Life in the Anthropocene, edited by Kregg Hetherington. Duke UP, 2019, pp. 115-48.

October 13  –  Reading Week

October 20  –  Vision, Perspective and Objectivity

Haraway, Donna. “The Persistence of Vision.” The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff. 1988. Routledge, 2013, pp. 356-62.

October 27  –  Images of Race

Berger, Martin A. “The Iconic Photographs of Civil Rights,” and “The Formulas of Documentary Photography.” Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography. University of California Press, 2011, pp. 1-57.

November 3  –  Images of the Foetus/Images of the Woman

Firth, Georgina. “Re-negotiating Reproductive Technologies: The 'Public Foetus' Revisited.” Feminist Review, no. 92, 2009, pp. 54-71.

Nilsson, Lennart, and Albert Rosenfeld. “Drama of Life Before Birth.” Life, vol. 58, no. 17, 1965, pp. 54-65.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=UVMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

November 10  –  Images of the Brain/Imaging the Person

Dumit, Joseph. “Is It Me or My Brain? Depression and Neuroscientific Facts.” Journal of Medical Humanities, vol 24, no. 1/2, 2003, pp. 35-47.

November 17  –  Indigenous Images of the Land

The Royal Canadian Geographic Society, in conjunction with Assembly of First Nations and National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. First Nations. Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, 2018, https://indigenouspeoplesatlasofcanada.ca/section/first-nations/.

Choose three chapters from the website.

November 24  –  Mapping the Earth

Helmreich, Stefan. “From Spaceship Earth to Google Ocean: Planetary Icons, Indexes, and Infrastructures.” Social Research, vol. 78, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1211-1242.

December 1  –  Mapping Knowledge

Manuel Lima. “A Visual History of Human Knowledge.” TED2015. March 2015.

Video available online:

https://www.ted.com/talks/manuel_lima_a_visual_history_of_human_knowledge

Eight Commentaries on Readings:

Students are required to provide 8 Commentaries on Readings during the 11 weeks September 15 18 to December 1. Students can choose for themselves which weeks they will provide Commentaries.

• Commentaries are to be approximately 750 words. They are to include: bibliographic information for the texts discussed, the main argument of the texts, and comments and questions stimulated by the texts. Commentaries are to be written in complete sentences and not in point form.
• In weeks with more than one text assigned, Commentaries must discuss all the texts and indicate the relationships between the texts. They should still be 750 words in total.
• Commentaries will be due at the beginning of the class discussing the texts through the eClass website. It is expected that students will discuss the contents of their Commentaries in class discussions.
• Commentaries are to be submitted as a Word document, double-spaced, and with file name: LastnameFirstnameDate.

Participation:

All students are expected to have completed all the assigned readings for each week with care and reflection, and to come to class prepared to discuss the readings with other members of the class. The Commentaries on Readings will ensure that all students come to class with questions and issues for discussion prepared in advance.

• The success of the discussions requires that each participant be ready to raise questions and to articulate and defend his or her opinions, as well as to listen to and to work with the ideas of other participants. It is recognized that some students are more comfortable with class discussion than others, but opportunities will be created for all students to raise points for discussion.
• Participation, of course, requires attendance, but attendance does not constitute participation. Being present in class but being buried in a computer does not constitute participation.

Presentation of Visual Image Related to Readings:

All students are required to present to the class an image or a visual representation at some point during the course. Any form of image or visual representation can be used— from pictures or short videos to maps or graphs. Dates for the presentations will be selected September 15.

• The image presented must be related to the topics and the issues raised by the texts assigned for that week, but must be an image not included in the texts.
• Students presenting an image are expected not only to have completed the assigned texts thoughtfully, but also to have researched images or visual representations appropriate to the texts.
• Since the presentations will take place in the second half of the class, after the discussion of the assigned texts, students are not to provide a review of the texts as part of their presentation. But students must be prepared to explain the image or visual representation, where they found it, and its relevance to the assigned texts to the class.
• Presentations should not be more than five to ten minutes each. It is expected that the presentations will raise questions and generate class discussion.

Research Project:

A Research Project is to be submitted by December 1.

• The Research Project is to be based on images or visual representations. Students are to choose two images discussed in the assigned texts for the course and research two additional, related images.
• Discussion of the images is to be related to the themes of the course, as indicated by weekly topic headings and assigned texts.
• The Research Project is to be approximately 2500 words.
• The Research Project is to be submitted as a Word document, double-spaced, with a bibliography and citations, and with a file name: LastnameFirstnameResearchProject.

A Research Project Proposal is due November 4.

• The Proposal for the Research Project is to be approximately two pages, and is to include a preliminary thesis, outline and Works Cited for the Research Project. Images should be included as an Appendix.
• The Research Project Proposal is to be submitted as a Word document, double-spaced, and with a file name: LastnameFirstnameResearchProjectProposal.

Both Research Project Proposal and the Research Project are to be submitted and returned through the eClass website.

All assignments are to follow MLA format for intext citations and Works Cited:

(https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html).

Senate Policy on Academic Honesty:

Policies, Procedures and Regulations